Former Fox host Eric Bolling spent 10 minutes talking to CNN’s Brian Stelter yesterday. I’m a Stelter fan but I think he blew some opportunities to get past Bolling’s blatantly false claim that there were not many Trumpers at Fox when Bolling worked there.
Bolling said he is not in talks with the White House about a job. But clearly he would not mind one. Regardless of his claim that the reason he tweeted his willingness to work there for a dollar (because he was infuriated by the recent spending bill), it was still out there. Also, in this interview, he said, “I did sit down with the president, I had some great ideas on opioids, I had some ideas on infrastructure that I presented to him.” Bolling added, “And I’m not doing it because I want to go there. I’m just doing it because I think the country could be better off with more pro-Trump ideological people surrounding him and advising him.”
Bolling, you probably recall, recently lost his son to an opioid overdose – on the same day Bolling lost his job at Fox over sexual harassment. As reprehensible as the behavior that got him fired from Fox may have been, you’ve got to feel for him.
He also discussed his departure from Fox as well as Ralph Peters’ “nuclear” departure last week about which he said, “Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.”
That led to this exchange:
STELTER: I’ve never seen anybody on cable news do that on the way out of the door. Did you agree that Fox is now a propaganda machine?
BOLLING: Well, you know, I haven’t been at Fox for a very long time. Ralph Peters—I used to book Ralph Peters when I’d sit for Hannity or O’Reilly.
STELTER: Yes.
BOLLING: And he would come on and he was always a friend brand. He’d always got have something extremely provocative to say. That’s—you know, Ralph Peters is entitled to his opinion.
Again, seven months ago, when I—eight months ago when I left Fox, there were not a lot of pro-Trump people at Fox. There was only a handful of us.
STELTER: Right, not a lot of pro-Trump people at Fox.
BOLLING: Go look back seven or eight months ago, and you’ll see, it was—there was Hannity, myself, maybe even Pirro.
FACT CHECK: Bolling stopped appearing on Fox in August, 2017. There were a lot of pro-Trump people at Fox even then. In addition to the three Trumpers Bolling mentioned, Kimberly Guilfoyle (who joined Bolling in a Trump-slobbering New Year’s Eve special); Harris Faulkner, Jesse Watters, Ainsley Earhardt, Steve Doocy, Pete Hegseth, Abby Huntsman, Melissa Francis, Maria Bartiromo, Ed Henry and Kevin Corke were all there at the time.
Apparently, Stelter did not want to make an issue of Bolliing’s ridiculous claim. But the look on Stelter’s face was priceless.
Bolling went on to parrot the Fox party line, “We are free to have our own opinions.” But as former Fox producers have publicly stated, everybody knows what’s desired and there is great pressure to conform to it.
Bolling also claimed that Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are “very opinionated but they’re always within the boundaries of fact.”
It was in the discussions about Fox that I think Stelter missed an opportunity to probe about Fox’s bias without asking Bolling to take sides between Peters and Fox. More delicate questioning, such as, “Much has been said about Fox’s cheerleading for Trump. Do you feel the network has gone too far?” could have elicited more nuance from an inside perspective.
Regardless, this was still an interesting interview. Watch it below, from CNN’s March 25, 2018 Reliable Sources.
To be fair, however, it would perhaps not have been entirely appropriate for a show in that time slot to insist on getting Bolling to admit that he was fired for being even more of an MCP than other suits on Fox.
Stelter should have pinned him down on this notion that “only a handful” of people at Fox News were pro-Trump, particularly if we’re discussing last summer. The reality is that Fox News is almost entirely pro-Trump. The programming is geared to support him, and the prime time shows are geared to defend him at all costs. The only people I’ve seen express any reluctance to complete fealty have been Shepard Smith, Chris Wallace and Neil Cavuto. The latter two of those appear to only have an issue with the childish way in which Trump behaves. Not with his policies, which are completely acceptable to them. And yes, it’s demonstrable that Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham regularly play fast and loose with the truth. Ingraham regularly inflicts so many blatant falsehoods on her program that it’s difficult to keep track of all of them. Hannity simply repeats his lies on a daily basis, to the point that trying to correct the record would take much longer than anyone would find worth the effort.
But the major area where Stelter allowed Bolling to escape proper accountability was in reference to his firing from Fox News. Stelter backed off when Bolling told him that he’d “never” behaved in the way that caused him to be fired. Except that Bolling is now calling 14 women who attested to his creepy and offensive behavior liars. Stelter never pressed him on that. Stelter also never pressed Bolling on his nonsensical 50 million dollar SLAPP suit against Yashar Ali for having the temerity to report the truth about him. And Stelter never asked Bolling about the massive countersuit filed against Bolling by Ali.
The reality is that Bolling is a pretty vicious creature, and one who continues to assume he can get away with outrageous behavior if he can hide behind either his political allegiances or the personal tragedies his own actions have helped to trigger. It’s his own fault that he was fired by Fox News, and it’s his own hubris that prevents him from understanding that. The smartest thing Bolling could do would be to acknowledge his vicious behavior and publicly apologize, and then retreat from public life. It’s frankly unfortunate that Stelter chose to give a man like this yet another platform to spew hatred and falsehoods.